| Notes |
- Letter from Rev. Alex Farquahar:
One wonders at the coupling of John Arnott Lamb and his wife. A bachelor of 54 joining with one so much younger...and what kind of relationship it was. I have no date of her death. We DO know that Luther Powell Lamb, (John Wesley's younger brother) lived with a man name Giltner as a teenager. Giltner was a Mennonite and of German background. My wife Glennis remembers that her grandfather knew by heart some old German songs which he would have learned in the Giltner household. Giltner, by the way lived in the Gorrie, Ontario area.
The youngest of John Arnott Lamb's family was Sarah Elizabeth Jane, born in 1873. All we know about her is that she had red hair and was adopted by a family named BELL. They lived in the USA and it appears the four brothers lost contact with her.
John Arnott Lamb's wife was Elizabeth Powell. I am reasonably sure that she was a resident of Bastard Township which is not far from where the Lambs lived in the Athens, Ontario area.
In the 1851 census of Bastard Township there is this record:
Isaac Powell, age 44, born in New Brunswick a farmer and Baptist 1807
Sarah 46 B Nova Scotia 1805
Israel 17 NB 1834
Elizabeth 15 1832
Sarah J. 14 1831
Lewis 12 1829
William 10 1827
I am persuaded that the Elizabeth noted there is John Arnott's wife. The 1871 census record of the Gorrie area indicates that John Arnott's wife was born in New Brunswick, then the 1881 census says Nova Scotia. The latter tells us that she was still alive in 1881 and the family is recorded as living together: John W. 15, Webster 14, Luther 12, William 10, Sarah 7. Curiously enough, the only death record of an Elizabeth Lamb that seems to fit gives the date as January 31, 1903. Do you suppose she did not die in the 1880's as I've always supposed? but perhaps was institutionalized because of illness and remained that way until 1903? The notion presents itself more and more to me as a possibility. I am wondering if you have any light to shed on this mystery.
I am presuming that John Arnott and his wife went to the Gorrie area as bride and groom..perhaps he had ventured there previously and came back to find or claim her. That whole region was know as "Canada West" then and the settlers would be homesteaders breaking ground. It is interesting that the old man joined his sons later in 1890 or so as they homesteaded in Manitoba. He would be crowding 80 at the time. This would mean that his wife would be left behind in Ontario, if indeed she were still alive. He was, by the way, a lay preacher for the Methodist Church for some time of his life.
I notice that John Wesley Lamb must have been something of a record keeper, he had so many birthdates and so many death dates at hand in his family Bible and in a couple of his letters and documents. It is strange that no mention is made of his mother's death. Was her illness or death something they did not talk about?
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